Oil and natural gas wells often utilize wellbore components or tools that, due to their function, are only required to have limited service lives that are considerably less than the service life of the well. After a component or tool service function is complete, it must be removed or disposed of in order to recover the original size of the fluid pathway for use, including hydrocarbon production, CO2 sequestration, etc. Disposal of components or tools has conventionally been done by milling or drilling the component or tool out of the wellbore, which are generally time consuming and expensive operations.
In order to eliminate the need for milling or drilling operations, the removal of components or tools by dissolution or corrosion using controlled electrolytic materials having a cellular nanomatrix that can be selectively and controllably degraded or corroded in response to a wellbore environmental condition, such as exposure to a predetermined wellbore fluid, has been described in, for example, in the related applications noted herein.
While these materials are very useful, the further improvement of their strength, corrodibility and manufacturability is very desirable.